Normally, just by consulting the technical specifications or the motherboard manual you will already know how much RAM your PC supports at the most, but this is not always possible, and especially in purchased OEM computers already mounted. So, next we are going to teach you to discover how much RAM memory the motherboard of your PC supports without having to open it, simply with a few simple commands that you can enter in Windows, Mac OS and Linux .
It seems obvious, but as we said, it is not always so easy to discover what is the maximum amount of RAM that you can install on your PC. Many OEM PCs use custom motherboards that are difficult to find information on, and in the end, even if you find it, you will have wasted a lot of time. To avoid these annoyances, we are going to teach you how to know how much RAM your PC supports by simply entering some commands, easily and quickly.
How much RAM does your computer have?
If you don’t know how much RAM you have installed, let’s start by teaching you how to see it. In Windows it is as simple as accessing the Task Manager (right click on the start bar -> Task Manager) and you can see it in the Performance -> Memory tab.
If you have a Mac computer, simply click on the apple icon in the upper left corner and select the option “About this Mac …”. In Linux you will need software like hardinfo , which will give you all the information you need to know about your hardware. You will find the amount of installed RAM in Devices -> Memory.
How to know how much RAM your PC supports
Now that you know how much RAM you have installed, let’s see how to see what is the maximum that your PC’s motherboard supports.
In Windows
Open a command console (right click on the Start button -> Command Prompt) and enter the following command:
wmic memphysical get MaxCapacity, MemoryDevices
In the example above you can see that the maximum memory supported is 67,108,864, that is, 64 GB of RAM. In addition, the “MemoryDevices” parameter tells us the maximum number of RAM sockets on the board, so if we divide the 64 GB by 4, we have to support modules of up to 16 GB per RAM memory module.
On Mac OS
Like the amount of RAM memory installed, in Mac OS it is very easy to know the maximum memory supported by the system. Simply click on the apple icon in the upper left and select “About this Mac …”. Once inside, click on the “More information …” button and go to the “Memory” tab. There you will see the maximum supported size, number of sockets and installed quantity.
On Linux
To know how much RAM you can install on a Linux system, you will need to run the dmidecode command, which is not installed by default in most distributions so you will have to do it manually. To install it, you will need to enter the following command depending on the distribution you use:
- ubuntu / debian : sudo apt install dmidecode
- arch: sudo pacman -S dmidecode
- Fedora: sudo dnf install dmidecode
- openSUSE: sudo zypper in dmidecode
Once you have it installed, simply enter the following command at a command line:
sudo dmidecode -t memory
As you can see, it clearly tells you how much maximum RAM you can install in the system, in addition to giving you the technical details of what you already have installed.
